Page:Life and prophecies of that faithful minister of God's word, Mr Donald Cargill.pdf/34

 very dear billics, whose converse and prayer together have been very edifying to me, and the remembrance of it this day is savoury, who lived in the Starry-snaw, was very near that Bentyrig where he was, Thomas and John Marshal, to whom he said at that same time, Lads, ye had meikle need to pray in earnest, you have a sharp storm to meet with, and many strange faces to see, and your bones shall lie in a strange land This came to pass three years thereafter in December 1684, about the same time that I fell into the enemies hands, Meldrum, that wicked persecutor, whom the world had heard of, apprehended them and carried them to Glasgow. Walter Gibson, merchant there, got a gift of them and other twenty-eight, who starved and poisoned them with little and bad victuals, above all that ever I heard of that carried our banished to foreign lands; few of them in that ship lived any time in Carolina; Thomas died in a little time after their landing there, John lived for some time and died there also. That which was the occasion of our banished being carried to so many different places in the world, was, in these days, there were Scots regiments in France, Flanders, and Holland; and, where their men decayed, officers came home seeking recruits; hearing of prisoners that were under banishment, got gifts of them from the wicked bloody counsellors, and carried them to these places. There merchants, such as Gibson in Glasgow, and Malloch in Edinburgh, Pitlochie, a laird in Fife, and many others got gifts of them, (and, as the old saying is, cocks are free of other folks corn,) who transported them to Carolina, New Jersey, Jamaica, and Barbadoes, to be their slaves; but none of them made their plack a bawbee with trading in such wares, which confirms what that singular Christian James Clarkson merchant in Linlithgow, whom the foresaid Malloch got a gift of, with other thirteen, said, when banished on ship-board in the roads at Leith, to which I was a witness, We are the baddest wares that ever